Letter 2026: Friendship either nourishes or sustains — and sometimes both at once.

Either affection is nourished or it is sustained by writing: epistolary conversation is the handmaid of love; mute love presents the appearance of the ungrateful; friendship that does not break forth into speech depreciates its own genius. Well is the secret of the heart revealed by the key of speech: by your condescension I am now the richer. These first-fruits of epistolary exchange I have dedicated according to the powers of my talent, through which I claim for myself the merit of one who loves more. For no one extends his lips beyond the barrier of silence whom speech, the betrayer of the mind, does not abandon as one mindful of a broken covenant. Therefore I hold the chief place in the communion of letters and am worthy of a greater cultivation, who first made known by the testimony of my tongue what I desired. Behold, I have declared without a cloud the obligation of sending a page. It is for you to foster in me what you have received, lest the judgments of your eminence suffer examination with me lying prostrate. For whoever does not protect what he has chosen exposes his judgment to censure. My lord, paying the reverence of greeting with full deference, I pray to God that he multiply the increase of his benefits toward you, because the sole wealth of my advantages in the fullest measure is that which raises your highness to the summits that are owed.